Richardson Scores Again (2 page)

Books in the Richardson series have been out of print and hard to find for decades, and their reappearance at affordable prices is as welcome as it is overdue. Now that Dean Street Press have republished all eight recorded entries in the Richardson case-book, twenty-first century readers are likely to find his company just as agreeable as Sayers did.

Martin Edwards

www.martinedwardsbooks.com

D
IVISIONAL
D
ETECTIVE
-I
NSPECTOR
S
YMINGTON
was checking the expense sheets of his men in his little barely furnished room at the Hampstead Police Station when the telephone rang. He jerked a thumb in the direction of the instrument without speaking, and his clerk went to it, leaving him free to wrestle with columns of figures. Arithmetic, as all his staff knew, had never been his strong suit. He had a pathetic habit of doing his addition sums aloud, and he was thus engaged when phrases in the one-sided telephone conversation caught his ear and he broke away from his brain-torture to listen.

“Spell the name, please. M-a-c-D-o-u-g-a-l—MacDougal…Yes, Mr. MacDougal?…You think she was murdered?…Has any doctor seen her?…Oh, a window was open?…You think he got in and went out through the window? Well, stay where you are, and whatever you do, don't touch the body or anything else until an officer comes. Stop, don't go away…Have I got your address right?—23 Laburnum Road. Is that right? Very good, Mr. MacDougal—an officer will be at the house within ten minutes.”

Symington pushed back his papers and started to his feet. Burglary and murder were matters that he understood better than columns of figures. He listened with impatience to the level voice of his subordinate while he recounted the substance of the telephone message. “Are any of the men back?” he asked.

His clerk opened the door into the adjoining room and glanced in. “Only Porter, sir. He's writing his report on that house-breaking case in Claremont Terrace.”

Symington went to the peg for his hat. “I'll go myself. Make a note of the name and address for me: tell Porter to come along with me, and while we are gone, repeat the message to C.O.” By these initials he meant the Central Office at New Scotland Yard.

It was the practice in that grim building for telephone messages reporting serious crimes from a Division to be brought down by one of the operators upstairs to the Chief Constable's messenger, and if that functionary happened to be otherwise engaged, to hand it to one of the detective-sergeants to speed it on its way to the proper authority. It chanced that the only man in the sergeants' room that morning was Detective-Sergeant Richardson, a young Scotsman, whose rise from a uniform constable to a detective-sergeant had led to some grumbling from colleagues over whose head he had passed. It would have led to more if he had been less popular. But being, as he was, one of those young men who never pushed himself forward, nor attempted to take credit for his successes even when the credit was due, he disarmed hostile criticism.

“Here's something for you to get on with, Richardson,” said the telephone operator, planking the message down on his desk.

“Another daylight raid?”

“Not this time. It's a murder up in Hampstead. The D.D.I. is on the job. A report's following.”

Richardson read the message and sighed. A plain-sailing murder case in one of the divisions was unlikely to come his way. For weeks he had been condemned to interview indignant ladies who had written in to complain that their handbags had been snatched from them in broad daylight, in several cases only to find a little later that they had left them lying on the counter of the last shop they had visited; or to pacify imaginative persons of both sexes who were convinced that they were being shadowed by members of a criminal gang. The least humdrum job that had come his way during the last few weeks had been to squeeze himself into an office cupboard a size too small for him to listen to the threats of a blackmailer who imagined that he was alone with his victim.

He read the message—that at 11.13 a.m. James MacDougal of 23 Laburnum Road, Hampstead, had telephoned to the Hampstead Police Station to report that on reaching home at 11 a.m. he had found the front door locked and bolted; that he rang repeatedly without effect and then went round to the back, where he found a window open. In the kitchen the gas-oven was alight: it had burnt a hole through the saucepan over it; the table was laid for the maid's supper. On going up to the hall above he found the body of his maidservant, Helen Dunn, aged about fifty, lying on the floor near the telephone. She had bled profusely from a wound in the head and her body was cold. D.D. Inspector Symington and P.C. Porter (C.I.D.) have left for the scene of the crime.

Richardson carried the message to the Chief Constable's room.

“What is it?” growled Beckett, who was wading through a thick file of papers and jotting down notes as he read.

“A case of house-breaking and murder in Hampstead, sir. D.D. Inspector Symington is now at the house.”

Beckett put out his hand for the message, glanced at it, initialed it and threw it into his basket before resuming his work. From that basket it would go automatically to Morden, the Deputy Assistant Commissioner, and from him to Sir William Lorimer. As Richardson knew, no action would be taken by Headquarters until Symington's report was received.

No. 23 Laburnum Road was a square, ugly Victorian house standing in its own garden; a semi-circular carriage drive led from the gate to the front door. In answer to Symington's ring the door was opened instantly. “I am Divisional Detective-Inspector Symington from Hampstead Police Station,” he announced. “I have had your telephone message. You are Mr. MacDougal?”

“Yes, that is my name. I'm very glad you've come. This terrible affair has been a great shock to me.”

Symington required no corroboration of that statement: the old man was pale and his mouth was twitching. He was a tall, spare man with stooping shoulders and dreamy eyes that seemed short-sighted, and he looked like a professor of some kind—the sort of man who is ill-fitted to deal with the hard facts of life. In fact, as Symington came afterwards to know, he was one of those stay-at-home archaeologists who make a hobby of the modern excavations in Palestine and their bearing on the Jewish history of the Pentateuch; a F.S.A. who attended every meeting of the Society and occasionally took part in the discussions.

The first step to be taken was to summon the police surgeon to examine the body, which was lying on the floor only three feet from the table on which the telephone stood: indeed, when Porter went to the instrument, he had to step over the body and avoid treading on the patch of coagulated blood which had flowed from the head. Symington did not touch the body: he asked MacDougal to show him the window which he had found open when he came home. He was taken down stone steps to the kitchen. There, as had already been reported on the telephone, he saw that a saucepan of aluminium which was standing on the gas-stove had been split open by the heat and partly melted.

“You found the gas still burning when you came in this morning?”

“Yes, and I turned it off. The gas-tap was the only thing I touched, except the door of my library. Naturally I had to see that my books and manuscripts were safe.”

“You found the front door bolted on the inside?”

“Yes, my latch-key wouldn't open it. I went round the house and found that window open, and I climbed in.”

The contents of the saucepan had burned into black, greasy ash, but some of the liquid had boiled over, and it was easy to gather from the dried stains on the stove that it had been cocoa. There was no sign of any struggle in the kitchen: everything was tidy and scrupulously clean. But the lower half of the window had been pushed up; one of its upper panes was broken. Symington took out a reading-glass and examined the pane, especially near the fracture; then he leaned out to examine the flowerbed underneath. There were footprints in the soft earth—the prints of boots. Mentally he made a preliminary reconstruction of the crime. The maid had been preparing her supper at the stove with her back to the window when the window-pane had been smashed with a hammer or a stone, leaving an aperture wide enough to admit a hand to draw back the catch. Probably the dead woman had screamed, but the nearest house was too distant for the cry to have been heard. Then, seeing a man getting in through the window, she had run upstairs to telephone for help, but before she could reach the instrument he had overtaken her and killed her by some means which it would be the police surgeon's business to determine. He invited MacDougal to sit down and answer a few questions while they were waiting for the doctor.

“You were away when this happened?”

“Yes, I had to attend the funeral of my brother-in-law at Redford.”

“What was his name?”

“Thomas Ilford. My sister wrote to tell me that he had left me executor to his will—sole executor.”

“He had property to leave?”

“Yes, he owned a good deal of house property in Redford as well as invested money.”

“What time did you leave home?”

“It must have been a few minutes after nine. I had to catch the ten-thirty train.”

“Your servant did not mind being left alone in this big house?”

“No, but she was not going to be alone all night. My nephew landed at Portsmouth the day before yesterday, and was coming to stay with me. He was really not due until to-day, but I sent him an express letter asking him to come and sleep here last night.”

“His name?” (Symington was taking notes.)

“Ronald Eccles.”

“Is he still serving, or has he retired?”

“He's still serving. His ship is the
Dauntless
, just back from the West Indies to refit.”

“Had you any particular reason for asking him to come a day earlier?”

“Well, yes, I had. There was a considerable sum of money in the house in Treasury notes—two thousand seven hundred and fifty pounds to be exact.”

“As much as that? Do you always keep such large amounts in the house?”

“Certainly not. It worried me, but there was no way out of it. You see, I had just sold a dairy farm to the tenant who had rented it for years. You know what these farmers are. They don't trust banks, but keep their money in an old stocking.”

“The farmer's name?”

“Edward Jackson.”

“And the name of the farm you sold?”

“Two Ways Farm. That is the name in the title deeds and the Ordnance Survey, but everyone in Redford knows it as ‘Jackson's Farm.'”

“And this Mr. Jackson paid you in cash for it? Why did he not pay the money to your lawyer in Redford?”

“I can't answer that question. The old man was very anxious, he said, to complete the sale, and he doesn't trust lawyers any more than he trusts bankers. He wanted to pay the money and get my receipt for it, so he did not waste money on a telegram. He got my letter accepting his offer for the farm on Monday morning, and he arrived here on Monday afternoon at four o'clock—too late for me to pay the money into my bank.”

“Why didn't you pay it in yesterday morning before you went to Redford for the funeral?”

“Because I couldn't be in two places at once. If I had waited until the bank opened I should have been too late for the funeral, and that would have distressed my poor sister terribly. I did the next best thing. I have no safe in the house, so I hid the money and wrote an express letter to my nephew telling him to come up yesterday and sleep in the house last night, instead of coming up to-day as he intended.”

“Did you tell him the reason?”

“Yes, and I told him where the money was. I took the letter to the Hampstead Post Office myself and expressed it. He must have received it yesterday morning.”

“But he didn't come?”

“Apparently not. I suppose that he had difficulty about getting leave. But it was unlike him not to telegraph and say so.”

“How did you address the letter?” 

“To his ship, the
Dauntless
, in Portsmouth Dock.”

“Where did you hide the money?”

“In my bedroom.”

“But where?”

“In a chest of drawers, under my clothes.”

“And you found it all right?”

“I haven't been upstairs to look yet.”

“You haven't
looked
?” Symington's tone showed his astonishment.

“No. In the face of the awful thing that's happened I did not give a thought to the money. I suppose it was the shock.”

“This must be cleared up at once, Mr. MacDougal. We'll go upstairs and see whether the money is in the place where you hid it. You lead the way.”

They passed through the hall where Porter was standing on guard over the body, and went upstairs to a bedroom on the first floor. MacDougal recoiled with an exclamation when he opened the door. The room was in confusion. The drawers in the chest had been pulled out and were lying on the floor, which was littered with clothing. MacDougal began a feverish search among the litter, kneeling on the floor, the better to assure himself that the precious bag was not lying under the pile of clothes. He rose and faced Symington. “It's no use digging any further at that pile. It's gone.”

“You mean the money you hid in one of those drawers? Are you quite sure?”

“Yes,” he said in a hopeless tone. “It's gone.”

“Was it enclosed in a box?”

“No, it was in a dirty calico bag, just as the farmer brought it to me. I counted it over with him and gave him a receipt. I tied up the bag with the same string and hid it under my clothes in the bottom drawer and locked the drawer.”

“Then let us get the drawers back and you can show me exactly where you hid it. Quick, or the doctor may be here before we've finished.”

It was the best treatment for frayed nerves. The old man fell to work. When the drawers were back in their places MacDougal pointed to the centre of the bottom drawer at the back.